Hoooo-ray! This (newly described by science) spider has 8 legs and it’s doing cartwheels to celebrate SocImages’ 8th birthday!

This is our 5,530th post and still going strong. Thanks to all of you who discovered SocImages this year and those of you who’ve been hanging on since the beginning!

Here are some highlights from the last year. Quite a trip down memory lane!

• Sociological Images was awarded this year’s American Sociological Association’s Distinguished Contributions to Teaching Award. We would love to think that the blog eases class prep a little and helps people get the best out of their students. If that’s what this award means, we’re over the moon.

• I was honored to be invited to talk about SocImages in a plenary speech at the Midwest Sociological Society. Of course, there were lots of pictures. You’re welcome to view the slideshow here.

• W.W. Norton released my sociology of gender textbook, with Myra Marx Ferree, and I worked up ALL the social media (twitter, facebook, pinterest).

• Three new SocImages Collections. Two of them are darkly and persistently timely: police, black Americans, and U.S. society and white men’s violence. The third is now part of history: fight for same-sex marriage. See them all on our Instructors Page.

• Rush Limbaugh covered a post about the relationship between studying economics and being antisocial and it sheds a scary light into the inner workings of his mind. (And I got called a “professorette” so… like I said, all high kicks all the time.)

• We got tumbld by Wil Wheaton!

• Two new Pinterest pages: pinkwashing and sexy what!?, a collection of totally random stuff being advertised as weirdly and unnecessarily sexual.

• Our social media accounts continue to grow like weeds: thanks to the 74,000 of you on facebook,  23,000 on tumblr, 22,000 on twitter, and 14,000 on pinterest.  We do have fun and learn stuff, too!

Here’s to another year! (Sorry about the spider.)